


good night bad morning

by firstaudrina



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Drunk Sex, F/M, Rough Sex, lots of oral sex, more dick pics than you might expect, some consensual verbal abuse/humiliation that goes a little awry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:02:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair refuses to be so hard up that she's giving Dan Humphrey the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	good night bad morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stainofmylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stainofmylove/gifts).



> blair thirsts for dan: a novel by me
> 
> perv warnings in additional tags

Georgina and Humphrey have been fucking for four and a half weeks and it's driving Blair crazy.

It's not just finding Humphrey ephemera all over the room. Sweaters, notebooks, his particular brand of cheap black click pens (the kind you get in bulk packaging from office supply stores), even _underwear_ – which is disgusting, and Blair doesn't want to contemplate how that, of all things, got left behind in her room at some point.

It's not just that he's there _all the time_. He sits at Georgina's desk to study and sprawls across the end of her bed to read. He uses Georgina's toiletries to shower in the dorm showers and leaves his wet towel edging over onto Blair's side of the room. He makes snide comments under his breath while Blair is holding court with the girls, or having important phone conferences. Blair is certain he even tags along to whatever Satanic rituals Georgina fills her time with.

But what really bothers Blair, what really gets under her skin, is that smug look on Georgina's face. It's that smug, self-satisfied, nearly _preening_ look on her face. It's the look of a woman who is _very_ pleased with the content and quality of her regular bedroom goings-on, and it's a look Blair has not had on her own face since god knows when. Blair can't even remember the last time she was that sex smug, which is the real tragedy of the entire situation.

The fact that it's _Dan Humphrey_ inducing these feelings in Georgina only adds an icing of absurdity to the whole farcical cake.

Honestly, Blair would refuse to believe that Humphrey's any good on principle, but the evidence seems to be stacking up in his favor. Blair can recall Serena's secretive little smiles and it makes her gag to see them reflected on Georgina Sparks' face. 

Against all odds, Blair and Humphrey have three classes together – all generic freshman requirements, all in packed classrooms where they sit on opposite sides pretending the other is a potted plant, or a stretch of blank wall, or a stranger. But sometimes Blair gets bored because expository writing is excruciatingly boring, and her gaze wanders over to the Dan Humphrey-shaped void of negative space on the other side of the room. And she thinks about Georgina stretching in the morning like a languid cat, all arching limbs and happy sighs. She thinks about Serena's bitten lips and suppressed giggles. And she just wonders _how_.

The curiosity is scientific in nature, and also a little morbid; like thinking about life on other planets and the disgusting things lurking in the depths of the ocean. 

Part of the problem is Blair's aforementioned sex drought, which has been going on for longer than she feels comfortable admitting and was a pretty big contributing factor in putting the final kibosh on her and Chuck's eternally doomed relationship. Whatever had once clicked between them had unclicked, and no amount of skeazy sex games reignited the fire. So color Blair resentful and horny. 

It's making her crazy. Hallucinations of water in the desert crazy. Like, for instance, coming home from her late class to find Georgina gone but Humphrey peacefully asleep in a tangle of bedding. Blair's undignified shriek was more than enough to jolt him awake, but when she realized he was _naked_ one horrified scream suddenly didn't feel like enough.

"Humphrey," she said, voice tight. "I need you to put your lumberjack gear back on and exit the vehicle as soon as possible so I can have Dorota douse the very _walls_ with bleach."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, I'm not looking to stick around." He swung his legs over the side of the bed, keeping a firm hand on the duvet, and looked around the floor, coming up with a t-shirt but not much else. He gave Blair a pained, slightly embarrassed look. "Uh, I think my pants are over by you."

"Ew," Blair said automatically. His jeans had indeed been flung to her side of the dorm and Blair stuck her pen through one of the belt loops to lift them up and fling them right back at him. Then she averted her eyes pointedly.

Humphrey snorted, there were some rustling noises, and Blair glanced over unthinkingly just in time to see Dan tug the jeans up – to get an eyeful of slim hips and flat stomach and a rather _appealing_ –

Blair tried not to dry heave right then, and every subsequent time she thought of it. She refused to be so hard up that she was giving Dan Humphrey the eye.

Something really had to be done.

 

 

Group work is the bane of Blair's existence. It seems everyone in every one of her classes is an idiot slacker, which is probably to be expected at a non-Ivy, and she always spends the entire time huffily doing everything herself. Until today, at least. Because until today she has not been put in a group with Dan Humphrey, the most annoying person in all five boroughs. 

They spend fifteen minutes arguing about semicolon use, which has nothing to do with the assignment, and then another fifteen arguing about the actual assignment. Then when class ends they argue their way down the hall, out the building, and onto the street. Somehow the topic seems to have shifted to the literary merit of _Finnegans Wake_ and Blair isn't entirely sure how they got there from semicolons, but she knows she is _very_ mad about it.

By the time they're coming up on the dorms, Blair has had enough. "Are you _following me_?" she snits. "Because I think in conjunction with the absolutely heinous opinions you have been berating me with, that counts as harassment."

Dan gives her an incredulous, frustrated look. "I'm meeting Georgina for lunch."

"You know, normal people don't _date_ Georgina Sparks. Sex is one thing, Humphrey, but parading her around like the next Mrs. Lonely Boy is incredibly pathetic."

"We aren't dating," Dan says. "Forgive me for being capable of sleeping with someone _and_ treating them like a human being at the same time."

"Oh, right, Saint Humphrey, I forgot." Blair notices Georgina gliding through the lobby like Morticia Addams and decides she probably ought to make herself scarce. "Well. I hope you don't wake up in an ice-filled bathtub somewhere with your kidneys missing."

Humphrey gives her an odd look and sort of laughs. "I'll try to avoid it, Waldorf, thanks."

 

 

If Blair can barely handle Dan's constant presence (and the fact that with him comes Vanessa from down the hall, another treat), it's a wonder that she's managing to put up with Georgina on a daily basis. Her entire half of the room is an offense to Blair's eyes, some kind of ominous goth cloud threatening to overtake everything. More black stiletto boots than any person should reasonably own are always scattered all over the floor, along with heaps of leather leggings and jackets and tops and vests, as though Georgina was the costume supplier for _Cruising_. An entire bottle of midnight blue nail polish spills onto Blair's _very expensive_ laptop case, and suddenly all her clothes have Georgina's distinctive smell of cloves and lilac. It's like rooming with a witch.

But the sex tape is another thing entirely.

Blair is angrily kicking all of Georgina's belongings back onto her side while Georgina raises her eyebrows and makes soft scoffing noises, focusing pointedly on her laptop to the exclusion of Blair's tantrum. "You know, Snow White," Georgina says, "Maybe you'd relax a little if you got laid…"

"How do you know I'm not?" Blair retorts, which is the kind of reaction only someone who isn't having any sex at all would come up with. "Anyway, I hardly need any advice from you. You're probably moonlighting as a dominatrix. I mean, who _honestly_ owns this much leather?"

Georgina smirks thinly. "I could probably teach you a few things." She gets up, setting her still-open laptop on her desk before shrugging right out of her robe, leaving her in just a pair of black lace panties cut high at the sides with a bow in the back. Scandalized, Blair averts her eyes. Nonchalant as ever, Georgina scoops up her towel and heads for the door. "Unlike some people, _I_ have a date, so I'm going to go shower." She points a warning finger at Blair. "Don't snoop."

Which is basically an invitation _to_ snoop, which Georgina knows and Blair knows she knows. The fact that it's a very obvious set up doesn't stop Blair from doing it anyway. She peers from side to side like she's expecting a boobie trap, then sits down at Georgina's desk to ransack her computer.

Her background is a sad little picture of her and Humphrey at some party, Dan dopey and drunk while Georgina looks poised and content. Georgina's email doesn't autofill the password, so Blair can't search through it (attempts at password detection fail; it is neither "Serena" nor "Dan" nor "Jesus"), and her browser is wiped clean, nothing bookmarked. Most of her files are blackmail pics or fashion inspo. Or porn. There is a staggering amount of pornography. Blair is almost impressed. 

She very quickly finds what Georgina intended her to find, the thing Georgina left _open_ but hidden, waiting. And Blair kind of wishes she had listened and refrained from snooping, because even from the screengrab she can tell it's a sex tape.

A sex tape starring Dan Humphrey, no less.

Blair doesn't really debate before clicking play because she's running on borrowed time here, and anyway her hunger for drama far outweighs the self-preservation of her eyeballs. This could prove valuable at the very least, or so she tells herself, tucking her hands under her thighs as she leans in to watch.

There's Georgina's bed and Humphrey on it, just a stone's throw from where Blair lays her head every night. The camera is positioned roughly where Blair is now, so it was probably propped up on the desk. The lighting is atrocious; it must be daytime due to the brightness streaming in through the windows, rendering Humphrey nearly in silhouette. Even so Blair can tell he's already naked.

She wonders if Dan knew he was being filmed just as on-screen Humphrey glances warily right at the camera, though he doesn't do anything else, doesn't seem self-conscious so much as cautious. That Humphrey's the type to agree to filming this is an interesting plot twist that Blair hadn't seen coming.

His leg, the one nearest the camera, is bent at the knee, so Blair can't see anything. He says something but the sound is distant and muffled, and Georgina's response is similarly lost. They talk for another minute, Humphrey just lying there propped up on his elbows, body mostly in shadow except for a sliver along cheekbone, chest, thigh. Then he says, too clearly, "How do you want me?"

Blair really wishes she had stuck to her side of the room.

"That's fine." Georgina drifts into frame, her black and white kimono-style robe half-trailing on the floor, dark hair flowing over her white shoulders. Snidely, Blair thinks that she looks like some kind of horror movie demon, like the girl from the bottom of the well. But Humphrey doesn't seem to think so, biting his lip as his hand skims up the inside of Georgina's thigh. 

Blair really ought to be planning some serious blackmail around this. She should be emailing it to herself, uploading it to the internet, sending in a tip – doing anything besides just watching as Georgina pushes Humphrey flat against the bed and climbs on top of him. He leans up again to peel the robe off her, tossing it carelessly on the ground as his mouth finds hers, the tilt of his jaw catching the light nicely.

They kiss for so long that Blair is tempted to just skip ahead (really, how long can Georgina's shower reasonably take?) but for whatever reason she doesn't. She just watches. Georgina's hair blocks their faces like a dark curtain, but Dan's hands slide over her body covetously, so rough and wanting Blair can nearly feel it. 

Then Georgina says something and reaches back to wrap her hands around Dan's wrists, laying him flat again and holding his wrists down on either side of his head. Blair's gaze is drawn to the shift of Humphrey's pinned hips against the duvet, the way he rocks up against Georgina. 

"Be still," Georgina scolds. And Humphrey listens, an icy little thrill curling up Blair's spine. Georgina drops one last teasing kiss on his lips and then the real action finally kicks in, Georgina turning and bending at the waist so she can wrap her lips around Humphrey's – Blair doesn't even want to _think_ about it. She prefers to think of Humphrey as being about as anatomically correct as a Ken doll. 

He makes a soft, fuzzy (couldn't Georgina invest in a camera with better audio?) moaning sound and wets his lips, then leans up so he can eat Georgina out.

There is half an hour left on this video and Blair is not sure she can handle half a _second_ more.

The thing is –

The thing is, Blair has always thought of Humphrey as an utterly non-sexual presence in her life, like a dog or a bookshelf. Now there are all these other things she has to reconcile with that, like the fact that Humphrey has nicely-shaped arms for a person to have. And a bone structure that is apparently well suited to shitty dorm room sex tape lighting. And also a nice…well Blair wouldn't write a _poem_ about it or anything, but it is proportionate and not aesthetically displeasing. It certainly looks…appealing sliding between Georgina's full lips. And his skills at…other things appear to be satisfactory if Georgina's reaction is anything to go by.

Blair needs to wash her brain out.

She's so on edge that the slightest sound of footsteps in the hall has her slamming the laptop shut – before realizing that Georgina left it open. Blair's scrabbling for the seam of the computer when she hears a muffled laugh behind her. 

"Don't stop on my account," Georgina says. "Enjoy the show?"

"You're a deviant," Blair snaps, without irony or even much forethought. She grabs for her purse and clutches it close to suppress the slight tremor in her fingers. "I'm going to – I don't know, to blind myself with an iron, or something."

Georgina's still laughing a little as Blair barrels out the door, but she's so _distressed_ that she doesn't even care about the embarrassment factor of losing her cool in front of Georgina. 

She just needs something to take her mind off Dan Humphrey.

 

 

Blair begins to spend long hours anywhere that isn't her room.

For the first time since their breakup, she misses Chuck, if only because he'd offer both a distraction and a place to go. But he isn't an option she's interested in anymore, and Serena is busy being lovey dovey with Carter Baizen, so Blair becomes very familiar with the library. 

She devotes herself to schoolwork – specifically the classes she does _not_ have with Humphrey – and decides to re-read _Anna Karenina_. All that suppressed Russian wintriness appeals to her at the moment, though she tries not to let her mind wander too much to Count Vronsky. She returns to the dorm late, only once she's sure it's safe, but she hates trudging back in the dark, and soon it'll be simply too cold to carry on this way. But she can't imagine she'll have to wait much longer for Georgina and Humphrey to implode. Either they do, or she does.

By the time she gets back tonight, the lights are off and both Dan and Georgina are asleep, his bare arm thrown over her waist. Blair grumbles a little in annoyance as she goes about grabbing her makeup remover and pajamas, then departs to the bathroom to get ready for bed. She's seen more of Humphrey than she ever planned to _in her life_ but the idea of getting changed in the same room with him, even if he's sleeping, is somehow mortifying. 

But she can't quite sleep once she settles, gaze flicking over unwillingly to the bed opposite hers. She wouldn't have pegged Georgina for the cuddling type; then again, she is almost supernaturally clingy. Finally Blair gives up and drags out her laptop, planning on watching _War and Peace_ until she passes out, but it isn't long before the rustling starts across the room. Then the tossing and turning, mattress creaking loudly with every moment.

Finally Blair snaps, "Shit or get off the pot, Humphrey."

A beat of silence, then, "You are not pleasant after midnight, huh? Or any other time, really…"

Blair peers at him over her computer screen. She's momentarily blinded by its glow, so it takes a second for her eyes to adjust to the shape of Dan in the darkness. He's sitting up in Georgina's bed, chest bare and hair tousled, scratching sleepily at one stubbled cheek.

"Your succubus keeping you up?" Blair wonders. "It must be hard to sleep next to that pile of claws and fangs."

"Ha ha," Dan says dryly. He looks over interestedly in her direction. "Hey, uh… Anything good in that mini-fridge?"

"Ew, do you honestly expect me to satisfying your post-sex food cravings? Please."

He gives her what he must think is a charming smile. "C'mon, Waldorf. Sharing is caring."

Which is how Blair ends up sharing yogurt and Luna bars with Dan Humphrey at two in the morning against her better judgment. He'd almost turned his nose up at the selection ("What college girl doesn't have even one pint of emergency ice cream?") but considering he'd disturbed Blair's movie watching, he really didn't have any option but to dig in. They sit side by side on Blair's bed, Blair in her favorite navy silk pajama set and Dan in Georgina's kimono, which keeps giving Blair mild attacks of paranoia any time he moves. She's seen enough of Humphrey's downstairs area to last her a lifetime.

"Never saw this movie," Dan remarks, gesturing at the screen, where Audrey and Mel Ferrer are paused in front of what appears to be a rather obviously painted city backdrop. Audrey is in a diaphanous silvery white gown, evening gloves all the way up to her puffed sleeves. Blair had a nightgown styled like that when she was little; Eleanor sewed it by hand. "But I liked that _Anna Karenina_ , you know, the one with Garbo."

Blair had been ramping up to lay into him for his poor taste but that takes the wind out of her sails somewhat. "Oh," she says. "Yes. Me too."

Dan gives her a sideways smile and stirs his spoon idly in his raspberry yogurt. "You still mad about the roof party stuff?"

Blair wouldn't say _mad_ , but she is perhaps still a little sore over it; it's no fun to be embarrassed in front of an entire roof full of people, even if they are obnoxious downtown hipsters. Even if she was there to do the very same thing to someone else. "That would imply that I even think about it, or you. Which I do not."

"Of course," Dan says, dipping his head slightly in amusement. "I noticed you haven't been wearing headbands lately."

The idea that Humphrey noticed anything about her makes Blair flush, which in turn makes her angry. "You know, you didn't need to turn _everyone_ against me."

"I think you kind of did that yourself. And anyway, you were going to turn everyone against Georgina."

"That's because she's Georgina!" Blair exclaims, much too loud; Dan puts a finger to his lips as though Blair needs to be quieted by him. "It must be going very well with Morticia, then. You're in full on knight in shining armor mode."

"She's changed," Dan says simply, like it's that easy. "She's trying to."

Blair laughs, but Dan is being genuine, because he gives her a slightly affronted look. She rolls her eyes. "Right, of course. How could you possibly be tricked by the girl who spent months pretending to be an out-of-towner named Sarah? You're so gullible."

He rolls his eyes right back at her. "She's been, you know, normal. For her. It's fun, we have fun together."

Blair doesn't dignify that with an answer.

Then he says, "What about Chuck? Weren't you convinced that he'd changed?"

"Yes," Blair says patiently, as though to a child. "And I was _wrong_."

"So no one can _ever_ change?" Dan says. "That's crazy. I mean, look at me – I'm not the same here as I was at St. Jude's, people _like_ me, I have a ton of friends."

He's almost pitiful. "The people around you changed," Blair tells him. "You're the same old Dan Humphrey you always were, it's just to a more receptive audience."

He frowns but he doesn't say anything, considering that. "Okay, so maybe that was a bad example. I still think it's possible."

"And I still think you're gullible," Blair says. "Look how easily you were taken in by me at that party."

Dan huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head. "Only you would criticize me for being nice to you."

"If there's a space for critique, who am I to pass it up?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he says. "Play the movie, Waldorf. Let's watch some Russians go to war."

She sighs loudly, pressing play. "If you insist."

 

 

The next day, Humphrey catches her outside Cultural Foundations and invites her to a party. 

"Not as my date," he specifies defensively, hands up. "Just, you know, as an olive branch. Since we're basically roomies and all."

Blair makes a gagging noise but still asks, "When is it?"

Blair wouldn't normally entertain the idea of returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak; after making a fool of herself at one NYU party, she wasn't eager to do so again. But the simple facts were…she didn't really have any friends here.

Nate was up to his ears in new lacrosse pals and frat buddies; Serena was still acting out _Sid and Nancy_ lite with Carter; Chuck was doing whatever Chuck does that doesn't involve Blair and seems to get him constantly photographed for the tabloids. Blair even sees Humphrey around campus with his gaggle of fangirls and boys. It seems like everyone has found some kind of niche except for her and she's tired of it. She's lonely. She might as well try again.

"For real this time," Dan says pointedly. Blair resists the urge to kick at his ankles.

In the week between Humphrey's invitation and the party, Blair's life goes to hell.

It's midterms week (hence the party at the end of it) and Blair only has one test to sit, but four papers to hand in. She busts her ass on those papers, forgoes doing her hair in the morning in favor of getting out fast to study and outline, barely even bothers touching a mascara wand to her eyelashes. She wears flats and the Blair Waldorf version of sweats: slim-cut cigarette pants and big loungey sweaters. She misses the occasional breakfast or lunch, she's at the library until it closes, she's determined to make the absolute most of her first semester at college and turn out straight A's.

But somehow all of her papers go missing.

It's a good trick, one Blair herself pulled on a few girls in high school, but that doesn't make it any less palatable to suffer through herself. Four papers, ten to fifteen pages each, that she remembers dropping onto her professors' desks in the flurry of double-spaced contributions from her classmates. And yet somehow they're just _gone_ , her professors doubtful of her veracity in claiming to have handed them in because none of them know her background or her face well enough to believe that she did her work.

Her most unpleasant professor, a vastly pregnant woman with an infinitesimal amount of patience, flat refuses to let Blair make it up. Another, more scatterbrained, admits to possibly having lost it; the other two take pity on her. Blair has three days to churn out nearly forty-five pages all over again, which she _does_ , thanks to her spectacular notes.

But in the morning the files have been deleted off her computer and all her notes are gone.

Blair isn't an idiot; she knows it's Georgina, even though Georgina obviously has an alibi for the night in question. That doesn't change the life-ending _suck_ of it all one whit, however, and as Blair sits there staring at her empty file folder she genuinely thinks she's going to cry. But crying over Georgina Sparks is a line Blair is unwilling to cross, so instead she tightens her jaw, cracks her knuckles, and does it all over again.

There's something to be said for persistence. It isn't Blair's best work, not by far, but she has something to hand in, which is all that matters. And she has a renewed desire to destroy Georgina, but a very limited time to do it in.

The party is at someone's downtown loft. Blair attends in full bitch mode, pearls knotted around her throat and wrists, her black dress slinky and glittering. As soon as she gets there, she scans the crowd for Dan and finds him gathering drinks, trying to figure out how to balance four cups in two hands. He does a little bit of a double take and then laughs, shaking his head.

"Waldorf, you know this isn't a formal soirée, right?" Dan says, just as a random girl a few feet away calls out, "Cute dress!"

Blair gives Dan a cool, smug look. But there are other matters at hand. "I need to talk to you."

"Cool. Talk." Dan hands her two of the drinks, pours one more, and then nods across the room. "Also carry these."

Blair frowns. She has no interest in being used as a pack mule, or in making polite conversation with Dan's groupies. She hurries after him. "Humphrey –"

Instead she gets roped into small talk with Vanessa and that obnoxious girl (Kat? Kady?) who won't shut up about all the _amazing_ points and _incredible_ insights Dan and Vanessa came up with in their Women in Literature class. Blair could puke.

" _Dan_ ," she wheedles, hoping the first name will get his attention, "Can I _please_ talk to you _sans audience_?"

But it's then that she sees Georgina stepping into the apartment, outfitted in a skintight burgundy dress with her hair in a sleek ponytail. Blair has always resented Georgina's beauty just a little, in private moments. There's something about her that is similar enough to Blair but more fully realized: an obvious darkness, a rich sexuality.

Blair shakes the thought off. This isn't about that. This is about three sleepless nights, finger cramps from typing, writing and rewriting and rewriting. 

She was going to take more drastic action, originally: she had been putting the finishing touches on some drug allegations when she thought of stupid Dan Humphrey and his stupid optimism. And she decided not to do what she normally did in situations like this. She decided to be honest instead.

"Humphrey," Blair starts again, fingers on his sleeve. "Humphrey, I have to talk to you about Georgina."

She's not sure if she expects Humphrey to be heartbroken. Blair relishes tattling a little bit because she's Blair and she can't help it, but she does find herself wanting to let him down gently. _Sorry about your psychotic booty call. Who could've seen it coming?_

He doesn't look heartbroken. His expression is stoic, unreadable, but it doesn't seem like a false front. The easy bearing he had when she found him pouring drinks has disappeared, and there's something much heavier and more serious to his sloping shoulders and crossed arms. Did he really like Georgina that much?

"Are you going to say 'I told you so'?" he asks.

"No," Blair bristles, though she had been planning on it. "I just thought you would want to know. So you wouldn't end up finding out the hard way."

Shortly thereafter, Dan excuses himself to locate Georgina. Blair watches, that Kitty girl droning on in her ear, and nurses her plastic cup of booze (which tastes like rocket fuel and, faintly, juice of some kind). Dan is very normal and composed with Georgina, which surprises Blair a little, though she reasons he's not exactly the type for dramatics. He leads Georgina out onto the balcony with a hand on her lower back. The sliding door swooshes shut, and that's that.

Blair doesn't see Dan again until the end of the night. He's alone and so is she, though she'd spent a good portion of the evening in pleasant conversation with a gaggle of marketing majors. Dan catches her eye across the room and tilts his head a little, holding out a beer. Inviting her over.

"I told her we should take a break," Dan tells Blair. "She figured it out pretty fast, though. No surprise there."

Blair still can't tell if he's really upset by the whole thing or not. 

"I'm sorry about your midterms," he adds after a moment.

"I am too," Blair says tartly. She studies her beer, which she has yet to take a sip of; it has a foreign label she doesn't quite recognize. Typical. "I just thought I should tell you that she hadn't really changed."

"No, you did the right thing, telling me." Dan nods a little and then gives her a sideways glance. They're leaning back against the wall, pretending to be casual and not making much in the way of eye contact. "Though I don't really get why you told me instead of…I don't know, lighting her on fire or whatever you would normally do."

Blair frowns. "I hope I'm more subtle than that," she says. Though it would be satisfying.

His lips quirk slightly. "Waldorf, you're like Disney villain levels of unsubtle." 

Blair knocks her shoulder against his for that remark. "I was trying something _different_ , I suppose."

Dan lifts his bottle to his lips. "Fancy that."

 

 

Blair doesn't see Georgina again after that. She's honestly surprised every time she wakes up and Georgina isn't standing over her holding an ax, but days pass and pass and there's no revenge, no Georgina. She can't help relaxing into it, luxuriating in her privacy. She'll probably be able to get away with this until next semester. No roommates, no noise, no leather, no creepy sex with Brooklynites.

Though Blair does find herself sort of slightly – she doesn't _miss_ Humphrey's presence, not one bit, but she does feel its absence. It was just that he'd been around so constantly, and now he's not. Sometimes he pops in to see her when he brings Vanessa coffee and makes jokes until Blair shoos him away. Blair always pinches herself very sharply, on the side of her leg or the tender underside of her wrist, so she won't smile. Then she shuts the door in his face.

But one day she wakes up, looks across the room, and sees a large, threatening duffle bag sitting on Georgina's bed. Oh _no_.

Blair sits right next to Dan in class that day. "The bloodsucker is back," she says. "I saw her coffin and telltale Louis Vuitton broom on the floor."

He startles, blinking at her. "Waldorf, how many espressos have you had today?"

"This is _serious_ , Humphrey. Your girlfriend's back."

_That_ gets his attention. "She didn't say she was coming back."

Blair arches a curious eyebrow. "You're still in contact?"

"Not on purpose. She always pounces on me as soon as I sign into Skype, and she's been texting me nonstop." He makes a scrunchy face, something like an embarrassed wince. "She even sends me animated e-cards. The last one had a puppy on it."

Holding up a hand to stop him, Blair says, "That is the funniest thing you've ever said, Humphrey. Thank you for that."

Dan rolls his eyes, but Blair doesn't think she's imagining the slight smile pulling at his lips. "Well, thanks for the warning, Waldorf."

 

 

Three hours later finds Dan Humphrey knocking on her door.

Apparently a lot has gone on since Blair woke up to Georgina's witchy miscellany. Humphrey tells her about all of it: the blackmail, the secrets, all sorts of personal things he would normally be loathe to offer up to Blair. It seems the first target Georgina locked onto upon her return was Vanessa, first for an update on Dan and second to plant the seed of getting back together in his head.

"Vanessa did it, or she tried to, because otherwise Georgina's going to…" Dan hesitates. "Well, do you remember that guy Scott?"

Georgina is threatening to spill the beans about Rufus and Lily's lovechild in the middle of their upcoming nuptials. Blair thinks it's really too early in the day for something like this.

"So, I was kind of wondering if you could help," Dan says, brow wrinkling. "I don't want to ruin their wedding, you know, but I don't know what to do about Georgie."

Blair bites her lip, holding back the question she really wants to ask: why would he come to her? Not Serena, not Jenny – her. But she straightens up and takes control, because that is what she's good at. "Here's what you're going to do," she tells him, and watches as relief loosens his shoulders.

It's simple, really. He merely has to string Georgina along until the wedding is over, then deal with the family drama. 

"Surely you can fake it for twenty-four hours," Blair says. "You put up with her for _weeks_ by choice."

They both hurry to wedding duty after that. Blair is responsible for locations and licenses, and Dan is responsible for keeping everything from going utterly to shit. She has rather more faith in her abilities than his, so she checks up on him throughout the day via text, in between arguing with caterers and the staff at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

_Went well_ , Dan says. _Totally pulled it off_.

_That I doubt_ , she returns.

_I did some great acting!_ Humphrey insists. _But nearly choked. Shoved her tongue right down my throat_.

_Ew_ , Blair says, and then a string of descriptive emojis, the ones with squiggly mouths that look like they're about to throw up and a few with X's for eyes for good measure. She wonders if it makes Humphrey laugh.

 

 

Needless to say, Georgina didn't buy it.

The wedding went off well enough in spite of it. Tears were shed, locations were changed, but Lily and Rufus were married and Georgina was M.I.A. once again. Even so, there is a heaviness to the atmosphere of the transformed loft, everyone moping underneath the hastily tacked up twinkle lights. Serena's having some kind of drama with Carter and Nate's finally shaken loose his Republican sweetheart – neither of which are changes Blair has any particular problem with, but they're both quite surly over it. Even Humphrey seems put out. 

"I'm sorry," Blair says, sidling up to him, "Are you _missing_ your crazy ex-girlfriend or something?"

He gives her a wry look. "No, just… It's been a day." He says it like an exhausted mother. _I've had a day_. He looks back over the dancing guests, and admits, "I'm not sure I'm ever going to get used to sharing a sibling with Serena."

Blair looks down at her hands, twisting her ruby ring around her finger. "Yes, fauxcest does put a damper on things. Though it worked in _Clueless_."

Dan laughs. "You know, that's the same thing Serena said." He looks at her. "Not that I'm looking to get back together with Serena. It's just weird."

Blair pinches the inside of her wrist very sharply. "About as weird as it can get," she agrees.

He takes a step towards the makeshift dance floor, and holds out a hand. Blair stares at him. "C'mon, Waldorf. It's my dad's wedding and my life's a mess. Dance with me."

Blair hesitates a moment and then puts her hand in his. "I suppose it's the least I can do."

 

 

Three days later they're sitting together in Conversations of the West when Dan leans in to write in the corner of her notebook, left-handedly, _wanna go to a party this weekend?_

Blair never noticed he was left-handed before. She reaches over to write in the margin of his book. _Please do not deface my property_.

He laughs silently and then arches an eyebrow at her, as though to say _so?_

Blair picks up her pen. _Ok._

The night of, both Dan and Vanessa appear at her door and Blair has a stupid flare of embarrassment at having misunderstood his invitation. He lounges against the doorframe waiting as she puts on her finishing touches: affixes an earring, adds more blush, checks to make sure her ID and key are in her tiny purse. Vanessa has already fixed her face into an expression of sour incredulity, but to her credit she doesn't say anything. 

When Blair finally deems herself perfect, she locks up and they head towards the elevators. Dan glances back at her once, hands in his pockets, and says, "You look nice."

Blair wonders then if she had misunderstood after all.

 

 

Blair is drunk.

Since arriving at this party, Blair has consumed a truly remarkable quantity of alcohol and she's not quite sure who to blame that decision on. Right now, working on another red cup of some disgusting concoction that someone told her was "a play on the traditional margarita," Blair thinks she's going to blame Humphrey.

He's not much better off than she is from the look of it: across the room, talking _again_ to that _unbearable_ Katie girl, he's red-faced and laughing way too much, occasionally bracing a hand against the wall for stability. None of this is really his fault in the technical sense, in the sense of Humphrey having done anything or even being aware that anything is going on, but Blair knows it's his fault anyway. Dan Humphrey, eating her yogurt at two in the morning and holding his own in arguments and looking like _that_. It's his fault.

Blair takes careful steps over to Dan and Katie. Why is it, she wonders, that you can never tell exactly how drunk you are until you start moving? Blair feels light enough to float away but at the same time she has an odd sort of clarity, everything around her very sharp and exact. She tries to blink it away, tries to will everything fuzzy and simple again.

Dan stops talking mid-sentence when he sees her. "Hey," he says. "You got lost." 

"Distracted," Blair corrects with a little careless shrug. Utterly nonchalant, she couldn't care less. But she feels good knowing Dan noticed she was gone. She feels warm, like he's touching her even though he isn't. Like they're alone, and the other girl is the interloper.

Katie must sense something similar, because after a few more minutes she leaves to talk to someone else. Dan leans back against the wall and gives Blair an easy little smile. "Having fun?" 

Blair gives him a noncommittal _mm_ in response, cup against her lips. The party is another rooftop affair, though this time it's off-campus, an apartment building glommed onto by a bunch of upperclassmen. Night falls faster as winter approaches, and the rooftop has a hazy ambiance as a result; it's all inky corners, strings of lights, lanterns. Pinpricks of lit cigarettes mark people standing in the darkest spots. Blair and Dan are at one such spot, but the only light afforded them is cast from nearby taller buildings. It's hard to read his expression through the depth of darkness, but she likes the general shape of him in the shadow: his plaid shirt against the brick, the soft yellow light catching in his hair.

Blair is drunk (as she keeps reminding herself), which is why when she touches Humphrey's arm she doesn't stop; her fingertips coast up his forearm, her hand smoothes over his bicep – and over it and over it. Her palm rubs over his shoulder and his chest and, god, his stomach, all of it solid under her fingers.

"Uh," Dan says. "Waldorf?"

"Were you always like this?" she wonders. It feels so nice, his shirt washed over so many times it's thin, so soft it's like skin. And him underneath, so warm. "Did you always have…this body?"

He gives her a look that is wary and amused and familiar, though Blair isn't sure where she recognizes it from until she abruptly remembers – the sex tape. "I'm pretty sure you only get the one."

But he's getting a little flushed even as he lifts his beer to his lips ultra-casual, letting Blair put her hands all over him. His free hand clenches briefly before he shakes it out and settles it on her hip. Blair can feel him right through her dress. She almost shivers.

"Waldorf?" 

Blair shakes her head a little as she curls her fingers in the front of his shirt. "Try again."

His brow furrows briefly but then he leans closer, says, "Blair."

She smiles. "Better."

"Is this – are we –"

"For God's sake, Humphrey," Blair says, and goes up on her tiptoes to press her mouth against his. And that's it. She's kissed Dan and there's no undoing it. He can't be unkissed.

Blair's easing away when his grip suddenly tightens, fingers splaying out fast and firm to keep her in place – to pull her closer. She gasps a little against his mouth and feels his other arm go around her, half-full bottle of beer chilly between her shoulder blades. He tastes like that: that beer taste, the slice of lime stuck in the neck of the bottle, the cool perspiring glass. It's getting cooler out but tonight isn't too bad, probably the last really warm night before winter finally takes hold. 

The night is warm and dark; the air is ashen and gritty; Blair is just drunk enough to pretend she's drunker, and to let Dan Humphrey kiss her like it's something he's really serious about. 

She thinks she must drop her cup because there's a cool splatter against her ankle and the sensation of plastic gives way to coarse soft curls, her hand twisted so securely in Dan's hair that her knuckles are pressed against his scalp. She wants to crawl up into his lap, except she can't because they're standing. Under the influence of a non-traditional margarita it seems valid to give it a try anyway.

Blair expects Dan to laugh, expects to feel that wry sound on her lips, but he only holds her closer and doesn't stop kissing her, his mouth somehow lax and firm at once, terribly inviting. 

"Hey Dan," she says, forehead against his, noses just barely brushing. "You want to come over?"

Blair isn't totally sure how they get from the party back to Ehrlich Hall but they manage it –he's kissing her neck as she gets him signed in, and all the while the person behind the desk glares daggers. 

Once they get into the elevator all hell breaks loose, really. They're all over each other, Dan crowding her up against a wall she normally wouldn't deign to touch (god, imagine all those out-of-towner germs) and Blair pulling him close, close, closer. His hand is at the base of her neck, palm pressed hotly to her collarbone and thumb stroking over her windpipe. He keeps making these sounds as he kisses her – these low moans deep in his throat, like it's so impossibly good just to kiss her. His hands keep flexing against her – her neck, her waist, her hip. Little involuntary twitches against her skin.

For her part, Blair can't stop arching against him, pressing up into him. Any time they stop kissing, she can't keep from sighing. It's so obnoxious. If anyone heard them right now, Blair's sober self would simply _die_. 

His shirt is coming apart under her fingers just as the doors ding open on a gaggle of startled-then-laughing students. Dan and Blair spring apart in a vain attempt to maintain their dignity, ducking out of the elevator and darting the rest of the way to her room untouching. But before she's even got the key in the lock Dan's mouth has found the nape of her neck again. 

"I'm shocked you haven't had anything to say yet," Blair murmurs. Her eyes close for a brief second as he nips at the shell of her ear, but the sound of the lock unclicking brings her back to the task at hand. Door, open. "Maybe I ought to be proud of rendering Dan Humphrey speechless."

His voice is deep and quiet in her ear. "What would you like me to say?"

She turns in his arms, her hands light on his chest. They back slowly into the darkened room, Dan kicking the door shut behind them. "How about," she tilts up so their lips are just barely touching and flicks her tongue against his open mouth, "something terribly impolite?"

They land in one of the hard, narrow desk chairs – standard issue, so it must be Georgina's, as Blair's was improved upon greatly thanks to Dorota's handiwork. Blair's thin straps glide off her shoulders so there's her in just her strapless bra, shoulders bare for Dan to kiss across. His tongue drags over the hollow of her throat and then he murmurs something in her ear that makes her moan, unusual words for her to hear in his voice, _I want to lick your pussy_.

"I think about it sometimes," he says, "in class. Foundations," which they have together, "I stare at the back of your head and think about pushing your legs apart and eating you out until I can feel you trembling."

God, _Humphrey_ , who knew? Blair certainly had no idea and never would've guessed, sex tape notwithstanding. 

She runs blunt, manicured nails over his torso. "Sometimes I think about you when –" but she bites her lip instead of saying it, taking his hand and sliding it between her thighs so he'll get the picture. "Ever since Georgina's stupid tape –"

Dan does laugh then, an unexpected and embarrassed laugh, though his fingers are still circling steadily through crocheted lace and the silk underneath. "Yeah?" he says, like he can't believe it, like he wants a little bit more from her. He wants to be convinced.

She nods, she'll do that, but first she needs skin on skin, needs some part of him inside some part of her.

"How do you want me to…" he starts, uncertain.

"Just rip them," Blair says, and there's something desperate enough in it that he complies immediately, digging into her Wolford tights and tearing them. Then pushing her panties aside.

Sometime she thinks about him when she's alone in bed, no use denying it now. Only since Georgina's been gone and the room has been empty of potential witnesses (though now, belatedly, Blair wonders about nanny cams?); only when Blair absolutely can't sleep at all. 

Then and only then does she think about his hands, a little knobby if she's honest, with too-short nails that she's beginning to appreciate; the cut of his hips, the architectural jut of his hipbones; his narrow shoulders and lean muscles; those very nice arms and how they might feel around her; his cheekbones. "Your lips," she finishes, the last in a list he probably won't ever be privy to. She touches his mouth and there's an answering kiss against her fingers.

It's too much for one girl to stand. 

The chair is an uncomfortable and unfortunate choice to fuck on, but Blair absolutely isn't moving now that she's here, she's only rearranging. Belt, button, and zip are taken care of with efficiency before she closes a hand on him, though she barely gets to enjoy it before she's shifting up and then back down, settling onto him with a shudder that sweeps through them both. 

There's a dreaminess to the room, dark and quiet except for the soft people noises out in the hall that don't seem to touch them at all. Blair feels sharp all over. The chair is truly an acutely terrible place to be doing this, as her legs start cramping in about thirteen seconds and it's rocking so hard that at a few points it seems in genuine danger of tipping over. But Blair finding it hard to care because of other things: how her mouth keeps bumping against his as they move, his hot skin and the glimmer of sweat on it, how ridiculous this _should_ be but somehow isn't. She feels hard and sharp and breakable, like she could shatter into pieces. 

She gets her arms around his back under the shirt, skin sticking together, grinds down against him. Her legs are getting a little pins-and-needles but the angle is good, perfect in fact. His fingertips dig in up and down her spine like Morse code. 

"It's so stupid," he says suddenly, rough. "I think about you all the time. I hate it."

Blair laughs, lets it spill bright across his serious mouth, and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him. 

 

 

First thing in the morning Blair flies off the bed in a tumble of sheets, shrieking. 

She'd woken up with her face smushed against Humphrey's shoulder, the impression of a button deep in her cheek. She's still vaguely wearing her dress and her tights but her bra is twisted around her torso unhelpfully. She's still wearing her _shoes_ , for Christ's sake. 

Blair peers over the edge of the bed, where Humphrey sleeps on, undisturbed by her existential crisis. He looks _ravaged_ , there's no other word for it, his shirt tangled around his elbows and chest mottled with marks. His jeans are at his thighs, his – well, it's there, and Blair averts her eyes, doesn't want to _think_ about it until she remembers that they hadn't even _used a condom_ , oh god what if she gets a Brooklyn strain of syphilis? What if she gets a Brooklyn strain of _baby_?

Details crawl back to her. They transitioned to the bed at some point, maybe when the – yes, there's Georgina's chair lying abandoned on the floor, knocked onto its side. Passing out exhausted sometime after the third time she came. Making those needy little noises when Humphrey kissed her, the drag of his thumb over her lower lip, pinning her to the bed as he fucked her so hard she thought her eyes rolled back into her head for a second there.

Blair makes the executive decision to leave before he wakes up and she perishes from mortification.

She twists her clothes back on until they're presentable and gathers her go-to disguise: a silk scarf to twine around her head and neck, big sunglasses, and a voluminous, body-obscuring coat. She scoops up her purse from the night before and is out before she has time to spare Dan Humphrey a second thought. 

She takes a cab uptown because she needs to be in her real bedroom right now. She needs to shower in _her_ shower, not some grubby dorm room water coffin, with essential oils and aromatherapy. She can smell Dan's cologne on her skin. In the ride over, she checks her phone but there aren't any posts on Gossip Girl about them, which Blair finds frankly shocking – she definitely remembers making out with him in full view of a rooftop of hipsters. 

It appears NYU's disinterest in Gossip Girl is working in her favor for once.

Blair feels a little more normal once she's showered and dressed in fresh clothes, but one look at her missed calls has her stomach clenching. She ignores all the ones from Dan and calls Serena back first, because gut-wrenching guilt or not, she really wants to see her best friend right now. They decide to get lunch.

Serena looks sunny and self-possessed, sipping lemonade when Blair arrives at their table. Her hair is up in a high, casual ponytail. She beams at Blair when she sees her.

And the first words out of Blair's mouth are: "I slept with Dan last night."

She hadn't really planned on blurting that out. It was more of a take to the grave kind of thing.

Serena's eyes go wide, but her mouth tugs up at the corners like she wants to laugh. "Dan?" she says, and keeps saying it, "Dan _Humphrey_?"

"Yes," Blair hisses. Then her lips purse and she fixes Serena with large, tragic eyes. "I was very, very, very, very, very, _very_ drunk. Do you hate me?"

"I don't know that it's really my business where you or Dan put…anything," Serena says before making a queasy, regretful face at her word choice.

"It was an accident. It won't happen again." Blair will make _sure_ of that. 

"B, he's not my boyfriend," Serena says, all gentle, and that is how Blair knows exactly what's coming next: "Plus I kind of have to tell you something about Nate." 

Blair does not expect Dan to be waiting for her when she gets back to her room, but that's where he is. He's all buttoned up and put to rights, his hair damp, sitting on the edge of her bed and thumbing through her copy of _Women in Love_. All the bites and scratches she left on him are hidden except for one, purpling, just above the collar of his shirt. She wants to sit in his lap and fix her mouth on it until it hurts. 

He looks up when the door opens but he doesn't say anything, just gives Blair an expectant sort of eyebrow raise. She feels like she has to speak.

"Oh," she says. "So you're still here."

Dan doesn't smile, but when he blinks his eyes get all crinkly and exasperated anyway, which is usually how he looks when he smiles at her. "Yeah, I figured the polite thing to do after you have sex with someone when you're both drunk is to hang around and see if it was a big mistake or not."

It's more than a little pointed. "Mistake," Blair tells him. She moves out of the way of the open door, gesturing out. "Goodbye?"

His mouth turns down at the corners, humor fading. "Blair."

She lets the door fall shut and then falls back against it. "Don't get that hangdog look on your face, Humphrey. Nobody took advantage of anybody, or anything like that. But it's not something I'm interested in repeating. Alright?"

She's not sure how to read the expression that crosses his face. "Alright," he says. "I just wanted to be sure."

"Now you're sure." She finds the handle of the door again, twisting it open, and Dan takes the hint. As he's passing her to leave, she puts her hand out. Her heart is beating a little too fast, but she says it anyway: "Friends?"

Dan tilts his head a little and gives her a searching look. "Friends," he says, taking her hand.

 

 

Things go more or less back to normal after that. Then again, that determination goes to one's definition of the word "normal." Blair has chosen to define it as "not having sex with Dan Humphrey," which works well enough on its most base level. In other terms – like, say, paling around with Humphrey, studying together, and going to movies – things are not exactly back to normal.

Blair finds she doesn't quite mind.

She'd really thrown him the friendship bone as more of a pacifying gesture than anything else ( _thanks for all the orgasms! don't call me I'll call you_ ) but Humphrey taking her up on it really isn't the worst outcome. He's annoying, but she likes to fight, and he usually knows what she's talking about, which is a nice change. He's also not stupid, which keeps her sharp; she actually has to work to circumvent his arguments. 

She also finds she's getting used to Vanessa, who tags along a fair amount of the time.

This comes back to bite Blair in the ass when Vanessa ropes them all in to some cabaret thing being run by her douchebag Tisch boyfriend (who Dan huffily disapproves of for reasons Blair finds suspicious) and Blair feels too much interpersonal guilt to turn her down. She's never felt _guilt_ in relation to Vanessa Abrams before and, frankly, she finds it unnerving. 

They have eight hours to write a fairytale themed skit ("It's a _play_ ," Dan corrects, grandiosely, for the fifteenth time) so they've camped out in Blair's room to prepare. It has the most space, thanks to Georgina skipping town, and Blair has also decided that she's the perfect person to keep them on theme thanks to her encyclopedic knowledge of fairy tales. 

It's been difficult to stay on task because Dan has been teasing Blair since they met up that morning. It was all very silly, just because Blair had chosen to dress _on theme_ for the day in a capelet and beret (with a very charming pin on her lapel shaped like the comedy and tragedy masks). He gave her an up and down look, a slow grin blossoming on his face. "Are you wearing tights as pants? For shame, Waldorf. What would the minions say?"

Blair fidgeted, annoyed. "These are _leggings_ , Humphrey. I'm being _theatrical_."

He's still teasing her now, seated as they are in a semi-circle on the floor, thumbing through some of Blair's illustrated fairytale compilations. "How about Snow White?" he suggests, holding the book open at an illustration, Snow White biting into an apple with a red bow in her dark hair. "That's what Georgie always used to call you."

"Gee, thanks for the reminder." Blair rolls her eyes. "And I told you, I'm _not_ starring in this thing. I _offered_ to direct, but…"

She lifts her eyebrows and blinks innocently at Vanessa, who snorts. "Nice try," she says. "No deal."

"C'mon, Waldorf," Dan cajoles. "Vanessa's making me do it, and I'm terrible at acting. Just horrible. You're fantastic at lying, which is at least half the battle."

"Hm…" Blair touches a thoughtful finger to her chin. "Is that a compliment or an insult, I can't tell…"

"Plus, we have co-star experience," he reminds her. "Countess Olenska."

Blair can't help smirking at him and the smile she gets in return is nearly smug. "What, so you want me to beat you up on stage again?"

"Well, if you're offering…" he jokes.

Without looking up from her page of scrawled notes, Vanessa says, "I can't believe you two are subjecting me to your flirtation."

Blair and Dan start spluttering at the same time – "That is ridiculous, why would you even –" and "I would rather _die_ , Abrams, as you very well know –" – but Vanessa cuts them off with an arched eyebrow. 

"The walls at Ehrlich Hall are thin," Vanessa says flatly. "And FYI, everyone saw you making out at that party. I am included in everyone."

They both go slightly red and try to avoid eye contact.

"But," Vanessa says, "I'm not gonna argue if you want to channel your weird…whatever this is into the play." She shrugs, and adds, to Blair, "I didn't think you were bad in _Age of Innocence_."

Blair perks up. She loves being complimented. "Really?"

"There was an occasional thread of real vulnerability that I found interesting."

Blair isn't sure how she feels about that, but she'll take it nonetheless. "My, my, V, I'm blushing."

"Don't get used to it," Vanessa warns. 

But Blair is already preening, and at the edge of her field of vision she catches Dan giving her a look he's been giving her a lot lately, one she likes but has no interest in cataloguing.

 

 

The centerpiece of Snow White is, of course, the kiss.

Blair lays there on the borrowed divan (hauled on stage from a corner of the coffee house-cum-cabaret, Lysol'd appropriately by Blair ahead of time) with her eyes closed and the bright stage light prickling at the seam of her lashes, waiting. She can feel the gaze of the audience and hear the rustle of the curtains cordoning off the backstage, footsteps that may or may not be Dan's. She remembers that they were supposed to kiss during _The Age of Innocence_ too but instead staged it, and during rehearsals they would just turn away from the audience, her face very close to his. Sometimes Humphrey would close his eyes anyway and Blair had loved to mock him for it.

But tonight it's Blair waiting with eyes closed for a kiss. She feels the air around her stir a little and her skin prickles, but it's just the new minions providing rhyming exposition. Though once they scatter, it's Dan, his hand braced on the low back of the divan, the creak of it as he leans down. "Kiss her!" someone shouts from the audience and Dan laughs, a huff of warmth against Blair's face. 

Her eyes open the minute they kiss, more out of instinct than script, and slide over towards the dim, shadowed seats full of people watching. Dan's eyes are closed, of course, so Blair gives up, gives in, and shuts hers, leans up and up still kissing him, Dan's hand on her cheek.

Everyone starts catcalling, so they break apart with awkward laughs, and continue with the scene.

 

 

The ramp up towards finals has Blair inordinately stressed, not least because she still has some good will to restore post-midterms.

"Relax," Dan says. "You'll be fine."

"That's all well and good for you to say," Blair sniffs. "Your girlfriend is the reason I'm in this predicament in the first place."

They're sitting on her bed with notebooks, highlighters, and textbooks out, laptops open, working on the best and most efficient study sheets they can manage. It is undeniably nice to have a friend who actually _wants_ to study for once. But still, the stress is getting to her.

"Do you want to take a break and –" Blair thinks about it, shifting up to sit back against the headboard. She doesn't really know what cultural touchstones are nearby, if any. "Well, there's got to be _some_ museum down here."

Dan snorts, shaking his head. "You know, for someone who takes such pride in being a New Yorker, you don't really know much outside of your radius, huh?"

Blair bristles but doesn't deny it. "I know the _important_ things. The things that matter."

Dan moves up to side next to her. "You don't mind it so much anymore, do you? Going to school here."

Blair shrugs. She's still not sure it's the right place for her, but, "It could be worse."

He smiles, looking at her. "You know, I wasn't thrilled about this either."

"Please," Blair scoffs. "This is your natural habitat."

"Yeah, I mean, it worked out fine," Dan says. "But I spent all of high school angling for an Ivy too. It's why I went to St. Jude's in the first place, drained my parents' bank accounts. Even though this is a great school, it still felt… Like all of high school was pointless. Just a lot of meaningless striving."

Blair turns to face him a little better, tucking her legs under herself. "So you and I are here," she says softly. "And Nate Archibald. Got into. Columbia."

Dan laughs, an unexpected laugh and therefore the best kind, which makes Blair laugh too. "And Serena got into Brown," he adds, which sets off another round of helpless laughter. By the time they wind down Dan is looking at her with that look again, the one Blair doesn't like to delve into too deeply. "You know… that kiss, the other day. It was pretty good."

"Dan," Blair says, breaking his name into two syllables with her wheedling tone. "What did I say about this kind of thing?"

"We have to talk about it sometime." He says it like it's obvious, inevitable, like everything up until now has been a funny joke but it's time to get serious.

"Not me," Blair says with another breathy laugh. "Haven't you met me? I'm Cleopatra. Queen of –"

But then they're kissing, too close not to, too easy to give in. Blair pulls him closer until she's tipping back against her pillows, a clumsy bit of repositioning that has Dan laughing again, braced above her. "I thought you wanted to be friends," he says playfully.

"I do, we are." Impatiently, Blair twists until she can slide her legs alongside his. "This is just…more."

"More," he repeats.

"More," Blair says. "Better. Benefits. Whatever word you want to use."

"So we can do it as long as we don't talk about it?" He's definitely making fun of her now, but he presses his mouth just as soft and teasing to the line of her throat, so she doesn't mind as much. 

"Just for stress relief." Her fingers curl into little fists where they rest against his biceps, wanting to touch and not touch at the same time. "Until finals are over. That makes sense, doesn't it? Friends doing favors for friends. We can have rules."

"Okay, Cleopatra," Dan says, pure lip service, as he plucks open the tiny opalescent buttons of her top. His mouth trails down over her collarbone and between her breasts, moves soft and hot over her stomach. His hair tickles her skin.

"I'm _serious_ ," Blair gasps. "Like, no feelings. That's a rule. No investment. No – no kissing."

At that, he pulls back up to meet her eyes, offended. "You can't ban kissing," he says. "Kissing is integral."

_Kissing gets you in trouble_ , Blair doesn't say, but Dan isn't done.

He gets close, his weight on her, brushing her hair carefully out of the way so he can lean down on one elbow. "It tells you everything you need to know," he murmurs. "About what you want, and how you want it." Blair's not quite sure kissing's ever done that for her, but when Dan wets his bottom lip before pressing a tiny kiss to her jaw, she thinks deeply about testing that theory. "And it says everything you need to say without you having to say it."

Blair tilts up to meet his mouth but before she makes contact he shifts back just an inch out of reach. Guessing his game, Blair gives him an unimpressed look, but when she leans up again, he pulls back again, lips curving in just a little bit of a smile. Blair flops back against the bed with a frustrated huff and Dan laughs, moving back in to kiss her – for real this time, she thinks, until he doesn't. He just hovers, nose nudging hers, mouth just barely brushing hers. But he doesn't kiss her.

" _Fine_ , yes, okay," Blair concedes finally, though she points at him in warning. "But _only_ as foreplay. Kissing in any other context is strictly verboten."

"I can agree to those terms," Dan says, with that little bit of sarcasm in his voice that she likes despite herself. He kisses her knuckles and then her mouth, hands skimming up her sides under her open shirt. She wonders what he's trying to tell her with this kiss, but she has a feeling she already knows.

"One more –" It's getting harder to think with Dan between her legs, kissing her neck, toying with the clasp of her bra. "No _sex_ sex, okay? Everything else, but not – not that."

"Okay," Dan says. "But naked's fine, right? Because I didn't get a very good look that night."

_That night_. It makes her blush slightly. "Uh-huh," she says, sitting up a little to let her shirt slip off, and reaching back to unhook the clasp. "That's fine."

She likes how he looks her in the eye when he touches her, cautious hands over exposed skin, but it annoys her a little bit too. The whole point of fucking Dan Humphrey without actually fucking Dan Humphrey is avoid all _this_ , all the sweetness she doesn't want to deal with. But then his head dips and she lets her eyes close, chooses to focus instead on how this _could_ be easy. If she keeps control of it, if she keeps things neat, then this could be easy and fun instead of everything else her relationships always turn into.

Blair's glad she prepared today like Dan was a boy she cared about impressing, with perfume on every pulse point and her favorite lavender lace bra and panty set. Not that he's paying much attention to the details, too busy mapping her torso with lips and tongue. He scrapes his teeth over her ribcage, the curve of her breast, her nipple; Blair breathes in sharp, shivers. He settles in there once he sees how she likes it, and after five minutes of absolute torture Blair is twisting, tugging at his hair. 

She presses her legs tight to his sides but there's nothing doing, no good friction to be found, just the sure, warm width of Dan's waist resting on her. Maybe part of the problem is that it _is_ easy. Not easy the way Blair wants it to be but easy in that they were cackling over their friends' GPAs five minutes ago and now Dan is rubbing his thumb over her nipple and it's not even weird. Her skin's all inflamed from the scratch of his stubble and she wonders how long it'll linger after he leaves.

Her skirt latches at either side of her hips and opens like a present – one side unfastened and folded back, then the other. Dan sits up on his knees to do so, then tugs her very unsexy thick knit tights down her legs, pads of his fingers following over her bare skin. It prickles under the touch, tender after being hidden away. Blair thinks of the other night, of _just rip them_. The little smile Dan gives her makes her wonder if he's thinking of it too.

He slips off the bed so as not to get in the way of their still-sprawled study materials and tugs Blair closer to the edge by her hips before he hooks his fingers in the sides of her panties. They come off with no fanfare, no teasing, like Dan is too impatient; but then he just looks at her, for so long Blair begins to feel a little shy.

"You're beautiful, you know," Dan says, almost conversationally. He kisses the side of her knee. He runs his hands along the underside of her legs, thumbs curving in to gently urge her legs apart. 

"I know," she says, but it comes out more breathy and less arch.

He gives her a little sideways smirk and kisses the inside of her thigh, the crease of her hip. At this point Blair very definitely, very desperately wants him to _get on with it_ but at the same time she doesn't want that at all, she would be perfectly fine if Dan teased her until she died from it. That's what his plan seems to be, anyway; he grips her thighs tight, fingers digging in, and teases her – soft licks, a touch run over her gently without delving deeper. Despite herself, that ridiculous video flashes through her mind again, how he was businesslike and almost rough, holding Georgina apart, eating her out. And now with Blair he's so delicate.

He's holding back, she can tell from that too-tight grip on her legs. She hopes it bruises, little yellow fingerprints. He makes that sound he made when they were kissing that night, the drunken mistake night, that low sound in his throat. It drives her crazy. She can't help the restless shift of her hips, pushing against his mouth. She threads her hands through his hair and presses down, impatient as any asshole boy, and thinks she can feel the hum of Dan's amusement.

"Alright, alright," he says, low, trapped against her. "No games."

He thumbs her open and runs his tongue flat over her folds, slides his fingers inside her and crooks them up. It's like going zero to a million with him. The sweep of his tongue, his lips closing over her clit to suck, his fingers inside her. It's single-minded. Over and over, his mouth, his hands. 

Every time she moans, too-loud and breathless, he echoes it, a deep, deep hum. She's rolling her hips down now, clutching his hair so tight Dan has to pull back a little to say, "You tryin' to scalp me, Waldorf?"

She tries to let go but she has to keep one hand there, stroking through his curls, practically scratching at the back of his neck. Her other hand scrambles for a grip on anything, finds his arm and twists up in the fabric of his sleeve.

When she comes, the sound she makes is beyond her control. She's so out of her mind she's barely aware of making it, anyway, all those little moans seeming to come from someone else. She has no energy to spare on anything but Dan's mouth and what it's doing to her.

But it must be pretty bad, because Dan is trying to shush her even though it's obviously much too late for that, and there's a furious banging on the other side of the wall. Dan has to stifle his laughter against her thigh. "Sorry!" Blair calls, voice sounding weak.

"I'm not." Dan is very smug; it's not a terrible look on him. "So, can we consider the deal sealed?"

Her eyes drift closed and she waves a hand vaguely at him. "Not if you rhyme again," Blair tells him.

 

 

It turns out starting a friends-with-benefits stress relief sex deal right in the middle of finals prep is not one of Blair's better ideas.

She is certainly a great deal more relaxed than she's been all semester, even if her neighbors hate her now and she's getting a reputation on the floor as the girl with the ridiculous sex noises. They should try having Dan Humphrey go down on them once in a while and then see if they can keep the volume on low.

So her mental state has been vastly improved upon, but her dedication to her studies is…slipping. Dan is her primary study buddy, after all, but now whenever they're behind a locked door it's all they can do not to jump each other immediately. They had to institute Vanessa as an academic chaperone. She is less than thrilled about this.

"This is for my own sake," she warns them. "I live on this floor too, and I am as much a victim as anyone else of the sex vortex of room 809."

Dan, who is not allowed to sit on the bed and has instead been relegated to the floor, pats the carpet fondly. "Ah, yes, this room has been good to me."

Both Blair and Vanessa pelt him with pillows. 

 

 

Blair and Dan are celebrating the end of the semester back at the loft, curled into a corner of the blue suede couch with black and white movies and bagels. Or at least that was the plan; they're awfully bad at sticking to plans lately. Instead food and laptop have been abandoned for later, and Blair is straddling Dan's lap with her hands in his hair. 

They don't really spend much time here and Blair isn't sure why that is. She's not sure Dan likes to be on his own at the loft, the family abode turned bachelor pad. He spent so many nights wrapped up with Georgina, and then so many with Blair. She knows sometimes he'd crash at Vanessa's too. He could've dormed, but then this entire apartment would have been left empty, no Humphrey remaining to oversee it. It's a shame they're not here more often; it's wonderfully private.

It's been a few weeks since their little arrangement started up and so far so good. Blair has no complaints aside from the jokey, eyebrow-waggling teasing she gets from Serena every time she insists that Dan is just her friend. Her very, very close, very naked friend.

"Sounds like my kind of friend," Serena said.

The thing is, it doesn't even feel like a lie – and Blair is aware that she is the kind of person who sometimes has trouble differentiating. Compared to the boys she's been with in the past, Dan is different. He's easier to get along with. Time with him is more relaxed, and it honestly feels like being with Serena sometimes; there's no pressure. He's as interested in hanging out as he is in sex, and they talk just as much as they fool around, if not more. It's not that Blair prefers one to the other; it's just that she doesn't have to work so hard at balancing them. 

But right now her commitment is unwavering: she wants to suck Dan's dick.

"How do your neighbors feel about noise?" she wonders, shifting restlessly in his lap. 

Dan bites his lip and rubs his hands up over her thighs. "No complaints. Lots of old musicians and artists. Bunch of stoners. All of 'em half-deaf. But you know…" He leans up to kiss her, and Blair loves the tilt of his jaw when he does that, the nice sharp line of it. "I've never really had a problem keeping quiet."

Blair smiles. "We'll see about that."

Turnabout is fair play.

He's already halfway to hard, she can feel it; kissing is apparently a _very_ big deal for Dan, as she's learned. Blair arches her back and presses down, kisses him deep and messy. She drops kisses all over his face, the freckle next to his eye and the side of his nose and the hollow of his cheek. She's been trying to reverse psychology him into growing his beard out properly. She's curious about how it'll feel on the inside of her thighs.

Blair pulls back only to haul his sweater up over his head and then she's tucked tighter than before, close as can be. She knows Dan likes that, to be bracketed in by her arms as she grinds down against him. She's in just her skirt and bralette, the sheer stretch lace a thin and flimsy barrier. She really never thought she'd be the type but she likes the little scritch of his chest hair against her skin, soft and coarse at once.

Just as he's starting to mouth over her collarbone, nudging her strap down as he goes, Blair shoves him back hard against the couch. His little intake of breath is delightful. She rides him like that, hands on his shoulders and hips rolling, rocking against him through denim. Dan lays back and watches her with eyes that are almost serious, his lower lip caught between teeth. He keeps his hands on her waist but he doesn't do more, doesn't ask for anything – Dan has been so good about never asking for more than she's willing to give him.

But tonight Blair wants him to _beg_.

She puts a pillow down before she kneels. She likes to do it kneeling because of the hitch in Dan's throat every time, because something about it feels naughty in a way that appeals directly to her sensibilities. Blair Waldorf with her carefully maintained image, pretending to be eternally prim and getting on her knees anyway – and especially doing it here, in Brooklyn, specifically for this boy.

She's learned to do this differently with different boys but she's still figuring Dan out. He's not very forthcoming about the things he likes or wants, and mostly just goes along with Blair – enthusiastically, but still. Nate enjoyed it when she pretended to like it more than she did; Chuck enjoyed it when she pretended to like it less, which is a can of worms Blair isn't opening; Lord Marcus wasn't interested in her doing it at all; Carter Baizen's instructions were explicit to the point that Blair still blushes to think about it. But Dan is like none of them, and Blair is still trying to get a handle on things with him.

No pun intended.

Once she's gotten his jeans out of the way, she presses a soft kiss to his hipbone, angled sharply above the fabric of his briefs. She kisses his stomach, which dips under the pressure. Then Dan surprises her and cups her cheek so she'll look up at him, runs a light touch over her bottom lip. He's looking at her so intently that heat flushes through her body. She kisses his hand and then bites his fingers pointedly, playfully, so she can focus her attentions elsewhere. 

Blair lowers her mouth to his hipbone again, the skin thin under her lips, her teeth. She's not gentle. She sucks wetly on his skin until it's flushed red, bites almost meanly, and Dan never makes a noise but she can still hear how he sucks air in sharply, can feel the rapid rise and fall of his body. She moves from one side to the other, ignoring how hard he is. When she's done it's impossible to tell her work from the flush that has spread all down his chest and stomach, all of him so warm to her touch. 

She leans up to kiss his chest, then tilts to kiss his chin. One hand slips into his briefs just to settle loosely over him, offering little in the way of consolation. 

"Jesus Christ, Waldorf," he says, and Blair smiles. She nips his chest too and then slides back down.

She finally tugs his underwear down but it's just to rub her palm slow over his dick. Not to wrap her hand around it, not yet, just to coast up the length of it, hard and getting harder, so hot. Her fingertips tease around the head, and she traces over veins with the edge of a dull fingernail. "How long do you think you can hold out?"

"If you go on like this? Five minutes."

Blair smiles. "That isn't very impressive, Dan."

"A testament to your abilities."

"I'll say. I've barely touched you." Now she does wrap her hand around him, and tilts her head to move her lips soft up the shaft, so gentle, hardly anything. Still Dan makes a noise like he's been stabbed or something, higher than usual, pained. Her tongue laves against him soft and flat, like licking an ice cream, tastes him and doesn't satisfy a thing. Then she pulls back, hand gliding over him. "You could say please."

She watches him bite his tongue, faint annoyance coloring his expression. Dan will absolutely never pass up a chance to be obstinate, no matter the occasion. 

Blair smiles again, just a little, and doesn't wait for a response before she closes her mouth around him, finally. She takes him in until her lips kiss the curl of her fist, and then a little deeper. Her head bobs, just a few times, just enough to develop a rhythm. She waits until Dan's eyes have closed and his head's fallen back and then she stops.

She sits back on her heels and wipes delicately at her mouth. "So you're not going to say it, then?"

Dan stares at her. "Say what," he says, flat, like he doesn't know.

Blair has this little thrum of excitement in her chest that she used to get when one of the girls did something wrong and she got to really lay into them over it. It's this mean little spark in her chest. "Maybe you'll figure it out," she says, and then she's back on him, sliding her lips over his cock.

She goes in fits and starts, slow and fast, gives him those little kitten licks or swallows him down as deep as she can. She doesn’t do any one thing for long, or with regularity. She doesn't let it fall into a pattern. The hand not on his dick is touching him everywhere else: nails dragging over his thigh, palm rubbing over his stomach and chest. He makes these aching noises, these deep groans, when she strokes low on his stomach. His hand curls around the base of her skull and just rests there, fingers threaded through her hair. She's killing him, and he just lets her.

He's got his head to the side, cheek resting against the back of the couch and mouth open like he's exhausted, like he's just given up entirely. Every so often a little groan. His stomach muscles so tense.

He certainly made it past five minutes. Good for him.

"Dan," Blair says softly. Her throat feels a little sore in a pleasant, tingling way. She kisses his hip, where the marks she left earlier have begun to darken slightly in certain spots, the very deepest bites. "Magic word…"

He mumbles something huffy and unintelligible so Blair sinks her teeth in right where his skin is purpling. "Please, okay," he says. "Okay?"

It's only satisfying because he looks so absolutely wrecked, lips all bitten and chest heaving. She thinks he really is terribly handsome, just awfully sexy without meaning to be, or even really knowing he is. God, she just wants to _torture_ him. 

But she chooses to be nice instead, because he's put up with so much so far. She takes him in slow and steady this time, working to keep her throat relaxed and open, until she's gotten him in all the way, until her nose just brushes his pelvis. Then she looks up at him.

" _Jesus Christ_ ," Dan grits, and puts a hand over his face like he can't take it. "Blair –"

She does it once more – pulls off slow and takes him deep again – because that's really all she has in her, and then she's sucking with determination, hand moving slickly over him until she can _feel_ how restless he's getting, hips shifting, how close. She pulls off again and tightens her grip on him the tiniest bit, looking up and meeting his eyes straight-on until his body gives a helpless kind of jerk and he moans, coming over her fingers. Blair wrinkles her nose a little at that and wipes her hand with his discarded shirt.

Then she comes up to sit beside him, a leg thrown casually over his. His eyes are closed but he puts an arm around her and hauls her up against his side so he can kiss her temple. Blair laughs. "Hey," she teases, fingertips running over his slack mouth. "What's the rule on kissing, hm? Foreplay's long over, Brooklyn."

"It was a thank-you," he mumbles, all sleepy. "It's polite."

Blair smiles and lets herself get all tucked into him, because it feels good and warm and companionable. She rests her cheek at the intersection of shoulder and collarbone, that narrow concave triangle. Even though she just reminded him of the rules herself, she sort of wants to kiss his neck.

"Hey, Waldorf," he ventures after a moment, his own cheek pressed to her head. "You know, I never really, uh… I've never really had these two kinds of things at once."

Already planning to mock him mercilessly for being sappy, Blair shifts back to look at him. "What's that?"

"Uh, you know. The sex part and the friend part. Usually it's…one or the other. So I really, um, appreciate –"

Blair kisses him on the mouth just so he won't talk anymore, which she thinks is a valid bending of the rules. "You're a sap, Humphrey," she murmurs. "Next time you want to thank me for a blowjob, why not try a letter handwritten by candlelight? Perhaps on a scroll. Ooh you can use a quill –"

Then Dan kisses her, presumably so _she_ won't say anything else either. "Mean," he accuses, affectionately. "You're a mean, mean girl." 

Blair smiles, leans close. "The meanest."

 

 

It's the last day before vacation starts and Dan is helping Blair pack up her room. She would have just left it for Dorota to do, but Dan offered and Blair doesn't mind having an excuse to spend the day together.

Their arrangement was technically only supposed to run through finals, but neither of them has brought up the deadline once. Blair is content to let it slip by unremarked upon. It won't matter for the next month, anyway: Blair is off to see her father and Dan is off to see his mother, so they won't be seeing much of each other until school starts back up again.

Which is how she ends up agreeing to the picture. 

"I won't include your face," Dan promises (coaxes, more like). "But it's gonna be a long month and I want, you know –"

"Something to remember me by?" Blair inquires sarcastically. She's already given in in her head, even likes the idea – no one ever wants her picture, it seems, but Blair is ever eager to give it. She imagines Dan in his small bedroom looking at his phone, sliding his hand over himself, wanting Blair when she's so far away. It appeals to her. It appeals to her a _lot_.

Dan has a smirky, knowing look on his face as he bends to kiss her shoulder. "Something like that."

A small part of Blair begins to wonder if that video he made with Georgina wasn't entirely her idea.

Blair bites her lip and sits up slightly, nudging her nose against Dan's as she reaches for the fastenings of her top. She tugs the loose silk bow at her throat free and then opens every button, keeping her eyes on Dan's as she does so. She leans back against the headboard and pushes aside her lacy, unlined bralette. She knows Dan likes them though he hasn't said, so she's been wearing them more often; she thinks he likes to peel them off her, shove them aside, all those very expensive scraps of nothing. 

She feels heated as she lies there waiting, Dan angling his phone to take her picture. Last minute he reaches up to twist her necklace around, giving her a half-smile. "Your initials," he points out.

He shows it to her after. There it is: her tits on Dan Humphrey's phone, La Perlas pushed away, his hand in the shot, his thumb on her nipple. Blair flushes pleasantly.

"Your turn," she murmurs. Even though he's the one who started this, he looks embarrassed as he opens his jeans, which is her favorite sex look on him. He likes to vacillate between this sheepish, unwitting virgin act and self-congratulatory pride; Blair finds it very charming.

She reaches for her phone so she can snap a picture of him getting hard, her hand and his working on it. But she realizes she doesn't have a single picture of his face, not one, and she wants one very suddenly, so she takes that too and quickly flicks away from it so he won't see. She shows him the picture of his dick and he grins but he blushes, and Blair wishes she could have a picture of that too.

She knows she should probably be smarter, or at the very least not do things like this, considering the reality of her life and its lack of secrecy. But honestly, if she were going to trust anyone with a compromising picture of her, it'd be Dan Humphrey. She truly doesn't think he'd ever do a thing with it.

He should worry far more about her.

 

 

Christmas in Paris should be everything Blair's ever dreamed of: the city of light lit up even more, everything romantic and picturesque. Her father is thrilled to have her, and Roman plans about a million things for them to do. It's all shopping and ice-skating and hot chocolate. Their house is gorgeous and decorated to within a tasteful inch of its life. Cat and Handsome curl up in two fluffy lumps on the foot of Blair's bed every night, and she's being absolutely spoiled with presents.

But despite all that Blair feels restless. She misses the city. She even misses her horrible dorm room with the terrible furniture and no privacy, the bathroom that makes her skin crawl, the girl-next-door's music always bleeding in through the wall. 

And loath as she is to admit it, she misses Dan.

Blair refuses to act like it, however, so she doesn't call him or text him or anything, just glares at her phone fifty times a day waiting for it to make noise. A week in, she finally gets an email. It's one line: _so I guess you haven't been getting any of my messages, huh?_

She frowns, both at the contents of the email and the brevity with which they are delivered. Then she goes poking around her phone until she finds that Dan had been texting her for an entire week on WhatsApp and she'd had her notifications turned off like an actual idiot, so she never noticed. She never uses that app anyway – Serena prefers another one with cuter emoticons – so she'd never bothered to look at it.

But there they all are, every stray thought Dan had sent her over the last seven days even though she hadn't responded to any of them. They're cute and mostly boring, sometimes funny, but knowing he was thinking about her is the best part.

_God, Humphrey_ , she types back, _I'm glad I didn't get any of these considering how dull they are_.

His response is a picture of his dick. _More interesting?_

_Boys are the worst_ , she tells him, then, _isn't it the afternoon over there?_

Blair has been so criminally bored in her pretty Parisian home and all she really wants is some of that unexpected dirtiness he's so good at – she just can't be too obvious in her angling. The picture is a little blurry, obviously taken quick and one-handed because the other one is there in the photo, splayed over his dick. There's very little skin, all things considered, his jeans just opened and edges of his shirt visible where he pushed it up. It's not bad, but Blair likes the one they took together. 

_Can't endure more Scrabble_ , he says. _I miss you_.

_Impressive one-handed typing_ , she responds, and lets her own hand drift downwards.

It goes on like that the whole rest of break, her phone practically glued to her hand. She can't decide what she likes more, the random and always slightly surprising dirty talk ( _thinking about me?_ / _about how good you taste_ ) or the near-constant bitching about his family, though Blair suspects it's just a cover for how happy he is to be with them. He sends her photos of the Christmas morning pancakes his mom makes, his own unimpressed face when Jenny makes him watch _Dirty Dancing_ again. In return Blair sends him the ever-increasing contents of her closet, Cat curled up asleep on top of Handsome. 

Every night she submerges in her bed, window opened a crack so it's cold enough for her to cozy up, and skims over the less-PG highlights of their conversation until she can't resist anymore and slips her hand into her panties. It's not ideal (the sound of his voice has become integral to her process) but it's the best she can get, and it's stupid how much she's looking forward to launching herself at him the second she's back in New York. 

The entire thing is truly out of hand but Blair is finding it harder to recall why that's a bad thing. 

 

 

The new semester brings with it the most annoying girl Blair has ever had to share a ten by twelve room with. Her name is Abbi-with-an-I and she's from Iowa or Michigan or somewhere, one of those states in the middle. She's very serious about her thick-framed glasses and making documentaries about very dull things like climate change, or whales. Blair tunes her out most of the time, and anyway she's beginning to spend a lot of her time in Brooklyn.

One night she and Dan are sitting on the couch watching _Belle de Jour_ , very domestically curled up under a blanket. Blair's legs are in Dan's lap and he's stroking them absently, cold hand on her warm skin under the knit throw. Blair is wearing her favorite pajamas, navy silk shorts with matching button-up top, which do the job of being both cute and comfortable. It is unfortunate that most of her sartorial genius is utterly lost on Dan.

Around the time the beige YSL makes its first appearance and Catherine Deneuve releases her hair from its perfect twist, Blair gives a little involuntary gasp of pleasure and wriggles her legs. Dan gives her a sideways look but says nothing. By the time Deneuve is thrown down onto the bed in her white lingerie, he apparently feels he has to speak.

"Are you getting off on this right now?"

Startled, Blair glares at him. "What? Ew. No. Why would you say that?"

Dan arches an eyebrow before dropping his gaze pointedly to her clenched fists. "You're kind of…breathy. And doing that sex face that you do." He exemplifies this apparent sex face for her, complete with exaggerated heavy breathing.

She frowns at him. "I do not do that."

"Yes, you do," he insists. "It's the face you make when I'm kissing up your thigh. Like you want it but you don't want me to know."

Her silence speaks volumes.

So he offers, "You don't have to be embarrassed, you know. Everyone has weird stuff. I once jerked off to _I Am Curious Yellow_. It was my most esoteric orgasm."

Blair doesn't know whether to laugh or scoff; sometimes the things that come out of Dan's mouth border on surrealism. "As long as it wasn't _Scorpio Rising_."

“Ah, yes, bikers,” Dan says. “My one true fetish.”

Blair _does_ laugh then, but she tries to act like she doesn't, so it comes out as a very unattractive snort. Dan smiles. "I'm _not_ , you know. Getting off on it."

The look he gives her is amused and a little daring. His palm eases over her knee and thigh, a firm and familiar touch. "If you say so."

Blair bites her lip. She's probably getting herself into something stupid here. "See for yourself."

His hand nestles into the space between her pressed-together thighs, his touch slightly chill. Blair tries not to move too much, breath still in her chest, but she can't help clamping down on his hand. "Watch the movie," Dan tells her with an edge of scolding in it and Blair does so dutifully, shivering.

As she refocuses on Séverine, she feels his fingertips sneaking under her shorts, flitting along the edge of her panties. Then easing inside.

Dan makes Blair come while she's watching Catherine Deneuve in her smart little outfits with her smooth golden hair, a cool and remote woman drawn to making bad decisions. Blair keeps her eyes open and mouth shut, trapping all those little moans before they can reach the air.

It's sometime after that that Blair feels bold enough to ask Dan for a little favor. They're back at her place for once – the penthouse, not the dorm, because Eleanor and Cyrus are out of town and the commute from Brooklyn was getting to them both. Blair has put on fancier sleepwear than a silk pajama set: she's chosen a plum-colored babydoll with a flouncy little skirt.

"And you're sure this is what you want?" Dan asks. Hesitancy lines his face; not distaste, not exactly, but a very clear kind of doubt.

Blair half-nods before leaning in to kiss his neck lingeringly, then his jaw. She stretches herself across his lap on her stomach. "Just try."

She can feel the uncertainty in Dan's body even as his hand ghosts over her back. He gathers the ruffled skirt to pull it aside. His hand rests briefly on her ass and then he tugs her panties down just under it.

"Like this?" he checks, hand smoothing over her skin before lifting, pulling back for the blow.

"Uh-huh," Blair moans. "Yes."

She feels the displacement of air that is his palm coming down, but he makes no contact, stopping just short of touching her. Then he tries again and fails again and laughs. "I don't think I can," Dan says. "I can't do it."

Blair looks over her shoulder at him impatiently. "I want you to."

"I know, I know." It comes out embarrassed, apologetic. "I'm sorry?" Blair sits back up. "I just don't think I can hit you."

She slips into his lap, twisting her arms around his neck and pressing her tits against him because she knows he likes that. "Don't think of it like that. It's fun. It's sexy."

Her panties are still caught around the very tops of her thighs, restricting her range of movement, but she rolls her hips down against him as they kiss, though she can tell – she can _feel_ – that this isn't going to work for him.

"You can't tell me you've never done this to Georgina," Blair huffs finally, sitting back, frustrated. She assumes one gets up to all manner of depravity with Georgina.

He grips her ass now, kneading, and Blair leans into it. "I haven't," he says. "Sometimes she – Well."

There's an interesting hitch in his voice. Blair arches an eyebrow. "What? Does she do it to you?"

His fingers twitch. "No…" he says, and Blair just assumes he's lying until he adds, "Sometimes she would, sort of…slap me. During."

Her legs are spread as wide as she can manage, her body fitted against his. "Oh," she says with realization. "You like that."

"No, it's just sometimes I –"

Blair slaps him across the face, the sound of it ringing. She feels him getting hard underneath her and assesses him anew, an interesting feeling thrumming in her veins. That mean little spark. She moves to do it again but Dan catches her wrist, rough, so she kisses him hard and pinches him sharply with the other hand, nails digging in. Dan grips that wrist too, much too tight, but still leans in to meet her mouth. Blair smiles.

"I get it," she says. "It's okay, I get it."

One of his hands snakes between her legs, two fingers sinking into her with little warning, and it hurts just enough to make Blair gasp. "Oh, that's good," she breathes. She bites his jaw, stubble under her lips. She wants, she wants –

But no. She needs the rules. Without them there's no telling what would happen.

Seeming to sense what she wants and trying to make up for it, Dan slides another finger into her, leaning back against the bed and letting her ride his hand. Blair shoves his shirt up so she can rake her short nails over his chest, leaving behind flushed tracks. His rhythm is hurried and rough and Blair hastens to meet it, thinking she'll probably be sore but it's worth it, it feels so good. She closes her eyes tight. "Call me something. Names. Be mean."

"You're a bitch," he says, almost indifferently. She'd been thinking something more along the _slut_ line, but this works just as well. "You're a self-absorbed, spoiled, _needy_ as _fuck_ bitch who wants," he shifts towards her for a messy kiss, "to be punished, to be cruel and to be punished, because then you don't have to try to be better. You want to be a victim. You want to be _absolved_. That's what you want."

Blair makes a desperate noise with no air in it. Her fingers dig into his skin and she tightens around him almost compulsively, wants to come but needing more.

"Do it your fucking self," Dan says callously. "You want everybody to do everything for you all the time. Fucking do it yourself."

So Blair does, letting go of him and allowing his hand on her back to anchor her as she rubs furiously at her clit. She comes hard around Dan's still moving fingers, and it seems to last forever. Before it's even over entirely Dan's arms are around her and he's kissing her repeatedly on the mouth, sweet and soft.

"I'm sorry," he's saying, "Was that okay? It just came out. I didn't mean it. I –" He falters. "I think you're great, you know?"

Blair laughs but it sounds a little off to her, tinny and unsure, and kisses him so he'll shut up. It's funny because they disliked each other so long and so deeply but now they're _this_ , whatever it is, but the other stuff is still there, it never went away. She's said so many horrible things to him, about him, about his family. Even now she wants all his time and attention but wants him at arm's length, too. And yet here he is: _I think you're great, you know?_

The most fucked up part is that she _does_ know. 

She leans her forehead against his, which is a little furrowed with confusion. She doesn't know how to soothe it because she doesn't know how she feels right now. 

"I'm sorry," Dan says again. "It was too far, wasn't it?"

"I don't know," Blair says honestly, and kisses him. "I don't know."

That night when they go to sleep, he strokes her bare back with calm, repetitive motions. She doesn't feel uncomfortable lying there with him; she doesn't want him to go. She's not angry, though maybe she should be. She does feel a little cracked open.

It's like letting Dan take that picture of her before break. She's letting him look at her and in return she's trusting him not to fuck it up. In return she's trusting him, and that has never been easy for Blair.

 

 

Blair keeps her distance for a little bit after that, about a week or so. It feels like it's a lot longer – and not just because she's suddenly back in Abbi's verbose company. Blair hadn't realized just how much time she'd been spending with Dan until he's not around.

Dan doesn't push it, he gives her space, but any time Blair sees him around school, he has a sorry, hangdog look on his face that bothers her. She honestly isn't angry, but she also can't deny that she occasionally replays things in her head ( _needy as fuck_ makes several appearances in cringing daydreams, as well as _because then you don't have to try to be better_ ). At the time they'd excited her but in the morning light they just prickle at all her insecurities. She thought she had done her best to not seem needy at all. She thought she had been better. Better than what, she's not sure she can answer. 

On Friday Dan knocks on her door. He has two bottles of very cheap wine with twist tops and gourmet takeout because he knows she's a snob. "Vanessa told me she's taking Abbi on a friend-date," which, of course, "And I really miss you a lot, Waldorf."

Dan always caves first. Blair really likes that about him.

A bottle and a half later they're both hiccupping drunk and laughing helplessly over a joke Blair can't remember even though she can't stop giggling.

"I really am sorry, I really am," Dan says, and he's smiling but sort of frowning too, brow all furrowed. They're sitting on the floor next to Blair's bed and he loops his arm around her waist, loose, like he just wants to touch her. "The other night, I don't know, sometimes I just say so much bullshit that really weird asshole stuff comes out, like, forty percent of the time."

"Yes, I am familiar with this quality of yours." Blair twists so she can put her legs in his lap, inching closer to him. "Your ten percent of worthwhile blather is usually _very_ good, though."

He gets a look on his face like he's anticipating an upcoming joke before he says, "And the remaining fifty percent?"

"Pure surreal garbage," Blair says promptly, and then smiles when he starts laughing again. "It's _okay_ , Humphrey. I'm not mad. It was good in the moment. It was just weird, after."

"Yeah, that's…definitely a thing," he says. "That about sums up my entire whatever-it-was with Georgie."

Blair wrinkles her nose. "Ew."

"Yeah, I don't think the girl who slept with Chuck Bass has a leg to stand on in this discussion," Dan says wryly.

Blair opens her mouth and shuts it. "Pretty pathetic, huh?"

He laughs, eyes crinkling. "Hey, I've done worse. Remember that time I had sex with Serena's English teacher?"

Blair didn't remember, actually, and it catches her so off guard that she makes a very unattractive gagging chuckle noise. "Oh my _god_ , Humphrey. Boys are _terrible_ , do you ever think with the organ up in your head?" She taps her knuckles against his temple.

"I don't know, do _you_?" He gives a loud fake cough that sounds suspiciously like _Carter Baizen_.

Blair punches his arm. "Okay, okay, we're all sex disasters."

"I don't know." His head tilts down so he can look up at her, some kind of baby deer attempt at being alluring. "Recent events notwithstanding, I always kinda thought you and I were a sex success."

Blair pokes at the rosemary sweet potato fries in one of the open containers. "How much do you remember of that night?"

"Which night? Oh, _that_ night. I meant, like, how every time we have sex it's crazy amazing, but if you wanna get specific – I wasn't really that drunk, Blair."

"Yeah." Blair munches down on a fry. "Me either." 

He has his head down slightly, not looking at her. There's something shy about it, though she has never particularly associated Dan Humphrey with shyness. "Blair, you know, I really… I know you were just doing your Blair thing that you do where everything you say is the mirror opposite of what you actually mean, but… I never once thought of that night as a mistake."

He seems vulnerable, she realizes abruptly. Cracked open.

She gives him a sideways glance. "Do you want to know something that'll explode your ego?"

Dan lifts his gaze and she can see anticipation in his expression again; he knows her too well, he's learned all her beats. He keeps waiting for her to make him laugh again. "Always."

"Before that night, I'd never…" She clears her throat. "Before that, I'd never come in that position. Missionary. I never could." His eyes widen by imperceptible degrees until he's doing a good impression of a startled cartoon. Blair gives him a little nod. "Cross my heart. Not once."

Dan is silent. Then, "I am a sex _god_."

Blair covers her face with her hand exhaustedly. "I am so full of regret right now."

"A _god_ ," Dan repeats. "Wait, can I send this in as a tip? Because I think all of Manhattan needs to know the extent of my _mad skills_ –"

Blair sticks a fry in his mouth. "It was good, okay? Don't take out an ad in the paper."

It's odd, but Blair feels lighter after that. The feeling of always being on the precipice of giving away too much – that edge that sharpened everything so far – has dulled to something relaxed and comfortable. By the time they've finished the second bottle of wine, Blair is giving up all kinds of things.

"I used to think I was damaged." Their legs are all tangled and she's leaning into Dan's side, his hand on her hip. "Because I wanted it _so much_ , all the time. I would touch myself every night. I didn't think other girls were like that. Even Serena. I thought I was defective."

Dan smiles at her, very soft. "I used to set up all these weird rules. Like, I wouldn't jerk off if it was a school night, I don't know why, I just wouldn't do it." Blair laughs. "But then of course one day I gave in and that was that."

"It's strange," she says. "It was like wanting it so much made me deny myself even more – like with Nate, I just wouldn't…" Blair thinks about being so young and so scared, how she would never even let Nate go down on her. "I needed it to be perfect because it was all I thought about, constantly, it was such a big deal to me and then he just…gave it away." Or gave it to someone who meant more to him than she did. "And then so did I."

Dan tucks some of her hair behind her ear. "I don't think you get a limited amount."

His hand has been trailing slowly up and down her leg, something he always does that she has come to depend on in some small, meaningless way. Like a cat, she knows if she sticks herself in his path, he can be counted on to pet her. "Not defective, then," she says, looking at him.

"I have always found you very effective," he replies, teasing, with a grin. "If you wanna talk defective, I can tell you some of the stuff I let Georgina do to me –"

And then he does, maybe to make up for how much she's given him. He tells her about letting Georgina rough him up and tie him up and treat him bad. He tells her a very interesting story about a vibrator and goes burning red along the back of his neck even as his voice stays low and certain.

At the end of it Blair has a list of new ideas and is more than a little turned on.

"Does it ever bother you?" she wonders. "That we don't have sex sex."

"Not really. It's your thing, it's up to you."

Confused, she says, "My thing?"

"Your rule. So it's yours to reconsider." His head tips back enough to rest against the side of the bed. "It's obviously an emotionally intimate thing for you, and that's your decision. You can draw the lines. For me," he shrugs, eyes drifting closed sleepily, "there isn't really a difference."

"What do you mean?" Blair says, frowning.

"I mean…" His eyes open and he surveys her, dark eyes under heavy lids. "I've still seen you naked. I've touched your entire body. I know what you taste like, I've heard your sounds. So for me, it's all the same. Equally intimate."

_Every time we have sex_ , he'd said before.

"I guess I never thought it really counted," she says. 

"It all counts, when you –" But he flounders, doesn't finish.

Blair feels a little bit of a smile creeping over her face. "When you _what_ , Dan?"

"When you're a sex god," he offers defiantly, all faux-brashness, left eyebrow arching dramatically. Blair bursts into laughter again, which is when Dan leans in to kiss her – not on the lips, but right on the line of her smile, between her nose and mouth. "Sorry. That wasn't foreplay."

Blair warms all over, flushed and happy. "It could be."


End file.
